A series of cyanotypes from my Dancing Queer History project.

Cyanotype is a cameraless photographic process; when exposed to sunlight and then rinsed in water, the prepared surface turns blue where it was struck by light. To create these works, we danced a slipping circle (a figure for four people holding hands, moving to the right and left with a side-step), a swing, or a right-hand turn on each sheet. Our moving bodies often blocked enough light to create a faint halo directly beneath us, but the stronger forms were created by our shadows.

Contact and connection are core elements of social folk dance and of cyanotype printing — but dancing above the paper, our movement and distance create ghostly images more evocative of clouds and water than solid bodies.